Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Support Your Local Murderer: Chief Brackney of the Sulphur Springs PD.

Like many third-world countries,
Arkansas is a beautiful place inhabited by lovely people who are burdened with
an extravagantly corrupt ruling class. This helps explain, but by no means does
it justify, the fact that the minuscule town of Sulphur Springs, Arkansas now
has a convicted killer as its police chief.

In January 2010, Coleman
Brackney, at the time an officer in the department that menaces nearby Bella Vista,
murdered a man named James Ahern following a high-speed chase. After trapping
Ahern’s vehicle and then pounding on his window, Brackney shot him six times –
the last time in the back. Brackney claimed that Ahern – who had a record of
trivial and petty offenses, including the non-crime of “resisting arrest” –
attempted to run him over after the chase had ended. This was a lie, of course:
The
dashcam video documented that Brackney was never in danger.

The victim: James Ahern.

By any honest definition, this
was an act of murder. Yet Brackney was prosecuted for “negligent homicide” – a
charge that assumes that the officer, who shot Ahern six times at point-blank
range, including once in the back, did not intend to kill the victim. He was
sentenced to a single month in the Benton County Jail and fined $1,000. The
families of the victim were given a $20,000 settlement by the county.

After Brackney was released, his
criminal record was expunged. Last April, the Arkansas Commission on Law Enforcement
– a regulatory body that enforces less rigorous professional standards than
whatever body sanctions professional wrestling referees – reinstated
Brackney’s “peace officer” certification. All that he needed now was a job opening – and
one was soon created in Sulphur Springs.

Between late 2010 and March 25
of this year, residents of Sulphur Springs had known the singular blessing of
living in a community devoid of police. It is an abuse of language to refer to
Sulphur Springs as a “town”; as of the last census, its population was about
500 people, and it had no measurable crime rate. There hasn’t been a murder in
Sulphur Springs in recent memory. By hiring a murderer as police chief, the
people who presume to rule that tiny village managed to handle both the supply
and demand side of law enforcement, as it were.

“I told the guys the day I left
I would be back,” gloated
Brackney in a local TV news interview, displaying the gift for
self-preoccupation that typifies his caste. “You put the uniform back on and
you look at yourself in the mirror, and you think, `I’m back.’” Of course, the
same cannot be said of Brackney’s victim, for whom the newly enthroned police
chief apparently cannot spare a thought.

Indeed, Brackney displays a
sociopath’s inability to recognize that he did anything wrong by murdering a
man and then perjuring himself in an attempt to conceal the crime.Like every other police officer
who has committed criminal violence against a member of the public, Brackney
takes refuge in the casual elitism that is commonplace among those in his
profession: “Until you have actually rode [sic] with a police officer or have a
family member or a friend that [sic] is a police officer, you don’t really know
what that job entails.”

In other words: Until you have
been licensed to perform acts of criminal aggression or unless you have a
relative thus invested, you have no moral standing to criticize those who use
that spurious sanction to commit criminal homicide.

To paraphrase Albert Nock’s
deathless insight, government police forces don’t exist to eliminate crime, but
rather to enforce a government monopoly on crime. Coleman Brackney embodies
that principle with uncanny fidelity. This is to be expected of Arkansas, where
there quite literally are no standards governing the qualifications and performance
of police officers.

Practically any hominid who can drive a car, pull a
trigger, and emit sounds that vaguely resemble the English language can be
stuffed into a government-issued costume and exercise “authority” on behalf of
the State of Arkansas.

The same state
government that exercises such rigorous oversight of people who cut hair or
paint nails in the private sector, it imposes no training or licensing
standards on police officers. Practically anybody who asks for a job as a
police officer in Arkansas can get a stinkin’ badge; it’s the qualifications that are unnecessary.

"According to
Arkansas state law, officers do not have to be certified for up to a year after
they're hired," reported the Memphis Fox News affiliate in February 2010 –
just a few weeks after Officer Brackney murdered James Ahern. "The
Commission on Law Enforcement Standards and Training says they can get an 8
month extension on top of that. So for almost 2 years, an officer can patrol
the streets, by his or herself, and enforce the law without having any kind of
training."

And, as we learned
last April, that same Commission is eager to reinstate the certification of
police officers who have served time behind bars for acts of criminal homicide.

Arkansas is riddled with tiny
towns afflicted with police who are not merely corrupt, but demented.

In late 2009, Police Chief Greg
Martin of Turrell, Arkansas (population roughly 900 people)
was charged
with aggravated assault after he broke into the home of City Council member
Floyd Holmes and threatened
the Councilman and his wife with a gun. A similar confrontation a few
months earlier in nearby Jericho actually resulted in an attempted homicide.

Until about 1990, the flyspeck town of Jericho (population circa 200
people) was blessedly devoid of police. This changed when the town received a
grant to create its own police force – and the community has been suffering
ever since.

Over the past two decades, Jericho
acquired a richly deserved reputation as one of the
most notorious speed traps in the South. But its police department doesn’t
just prey on unsuspecting visitors with out-of-state license plates: Persistent
harassment by the police and a rising tide of official corruption drove many
locals to leave the town.

A few years ago, Fire Chief Don
Payne challenged a dubious speeding ticket in court. Later that day, he was
hit with a second spurious citation as a transparent act of retaliation for
challenging the first one. When he protested the second citation, Payne was
mobbed in court by seven officers and then
shot. This atrocity did have one salutary result: The police department was
temporarily disbanded, and all outstanding citations were dismissed, while
investigators tried to determine what had happened to
the funds that had been mulcted from speed trap victims.

Stovall (left) swearing in "reservists."

The town of Paragould has a population of 25,000, which makes it a
major metropolis by Arkansas standards. This might explain the grandiose
ambitions of Todd Stovall, the J.W. Pepper-grade living
caricature who presides over the town’s police department.

"The fear is what's given
us the reason to do this,” insisted Stovall as he announced that the city would be placed under
martial law for the supposed purpose of deterring crime. “Once I have stats and
people are saying they're scared, we can do this. It allows us to do what we're
fixing to do."

There is no evidence that people
in Paragould are in fear of anyone other than the bullet-headed dimwit who
heads their police force, and the costumed adolescents under his command. The “stats”
referred to by Stovall certainly don’t justify the perception that the town is
under siege. While Paragould
historically has a high burglary rate, its violent crime rate is substantially
below the national average: In 2010, the last year for which stats are
available, there wasn’t a single murder in the town.

Despite these facts, Stovall
insists that a “crisis” exists that justifies the suspension of constitutional
rules and the imposition of a city-wide curfew.

“I’ve got statistical reasons
that say I’ve got a lot of crime right now, which gives me probable cause to
ask what you’re doing out,” grunted Stovall at a town meeting at the West View
Baptist Church. He admits that he didn’t consult an attorney before reaching
that conclusion, and that “I don’t even know that there’s ever been a
difference” between what he’s proposing and undisguised martial law. To those
who might complain about being harassed by Stovall’s minions, the chief offers
an unqualified promise: “If you’re out walking, we’re going to stop you, ask
why you’re out walking, check for your ID….We have a zero-tolerance. We are
prepared to throw your hind-end in jail, OK? We are not going to take a lot of
flack.”

“We’re going to do it to
everybody,” Stovall explained, anticipating objections. “Criminals don’t like
being talked to.”

The same is true of citizens, of
course. But like most members of his paramilitary tribe, Stovall divides the
world between the Mundane population -- which is to be intimidated into submission
– and enlightened agents of State “authority” such as himself and the murderer
who is the newly appointed police chief of Sulphur Springs.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Resisting arrest is not a crime. It is a common-law right, the
exercise of which is treated as if it were a crime.

The act of resistance was transmuted into a criminal offense
chiefly through judicial activism, rather than legislation. Courts that seek to
criminalize resistance have generally made the pragmatic argument that
resistance is more dangerous than submission. We’ve long since reached the
point where the reverse is often the case.

Until 1942, when the Interstate
Commission on Crime published the Uniform
Arrest Act, every state recognized and protected the right to resist. Under
the still-controlling U.S. Supreme Court precedent, John
Bad Elk vs. US, a citizen faced with the prospect of unlawful arrest –
that is, an armed abduction – has a legally protected right to use any
appropriate means, including lethal force, to defend himself.

The Bad Elk ruling
came in 1900. Thirteen years later, the New Mexico
State Supreme Court, in Territory v.
Lynch, tried out a line of sophistry that would become part of the standard
refrain in judicial rulings six decades later:

“The law … calls upon
the citizen to exercise patience, if illegally arrested, because he knows he
will be brought before a magistrate, and will, if improperly arrested, suffer
only a temporary deprivation of his liberty.”

In other words: If a cop seeks to abduct you without legal
justification, you should submit in the serene confidence that your deprivation
of liberty will be temporary and trivial. I have referred to this as the "Rapist Doctrine," since rapists and police officers are the only assailants whose victims are encouraged to submit.

One hundred years after the New Mexico State Supreme Court
published that ruling, the case of New
Mexico resident Stephen Slevin demonstrates that this assurance is a
cynical lie.

In 2005, Slevin – who was battling depression and driving a
car lent to him by a friend -- was stopped for driving under the influence. He
was put into a special cell reserved for people suspected of being suicidal.
After three days, he was transferred to solitary confinement --- where he
remained for two years.

Although some may regard the traffic stop to be considered
justified, and the initial arrest to be defensible, what happened to Slevin
offers a stark and compelling demonstration of what can happen to anyone who
finds himself immured in one of the Regime’s penal facilities. What was done to
him is indistinguishable from the kind of criminal abuse associated in the
public mind with prison facilities in Cuba and North Korea. More importantly,
it is entirely typical of what happens in jails and prisons here in the
putative Land of the Free.

Prolonged solitary confinement is a form of torture. In
Slevin’s case, isolation was compounded with aggressive neglect as he literally
rotted in his cell.

Despite repeated pleas for medical attention, Slevin
developed skin fungus and bedsores. Deprived of dental care, Slevin was
eventually forced to extract a tooth by himself. His toenails grew so long that
they curled under his feet, his hair and beard grew to be long and unkempt, and
he lost fifty pounds.

As his body decayed, Slevin’s mind degenerated. Already
depressed at the time of his imprisonment, Slevin fell prey to hallucinations.

“I have not slept in days,”Slevin wrote to a nurse a couple
of weeks into his solitary confinement. “I’m in a deep depression.” He also
mentioned a lack of appetite, and that he was being afflicted with “weird and
bizarre” dreams.

The habeas corpus guarantee requires that anyone arrested by
the police be quickly brought before a judge and either formally charged or
released. Slevin, who was sent to solitary after failing to post $40,000 in
bail, was never given a judicial hearing. If it weren’t for the intervention of
his sister, who became concerned after Slevin stopped replying to her letters,
Slevin would have died in jail without ever being charged with a crime.

Slevin at his booking (l), and following two years in solitary.

Once he was released, Slevin filed a lawsuit against Dona
Ana County. After a five-year legal struggle, Slevin was awarded $22 million by
a federal court– one million dollars for every month he had been unlawfully
incarcerated.

The county, which refused to discipline anybody responsible
for Slevin’s imprisonment and torture, and refuses to answer questions about
the crime committed against that man, protested that the civil judgment was
excessive, and eventually agreed to a
$15.5 million tax-funded civil settlement. This may still seem like an
extravagant amount until it’s understood that the 59-year-old victim suffers
from terminal lung cancer.

“The law cannot restore an arm, an eye, or a life; it can
and does restore freedom,” wrote Ralph D. Smith of the University of New Mexico
School of Law in a 1967 law
school journal essay. His point was that “self-help” by citizens confronted
with the prospect of unlawful arrest is impermissible, because they are dealing
with people – that is, police officers – who have legal sanction to kill them
if they resist.

“Life and liberty, though equally precious, cannot be viewed
on the same plane where self-help is concerned,” Smith continues. “Liberty can
be secured by a resort to law, life cannot.” A good case can be made for the
proposition that Slevin’s illegal incarceration was terminal. Furthermore,
unjust deprivation of liberty for any
length of time is a grave and ineffaceable injury.

“If one is unlawfully arrested today, his period of
confinement is likely to be brief,” wrote Smith, offering a glib assurance of
the kind that comes easily to those who are paid well to defend the
indefensible. “In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries” – that is, the
period in which British courts handed down rulings
explicitly recognizing the common
law right to resist arrest – “bail was usually unattainable. Today, it is
freely granted for most offenses.

Requirements of a prompt hearing and
arraignment before a magistrate also serve to protect today’s citizen from a
lengthy unjustified detention.”

None of that was true in the case of Stephen Slevin, who
suffered the theft of two years that were stolen from a life that was further
abbreviated by the unpunished abuse of those who illegally imprisoned him.

During the less-enlightened times in which courts recognized
that citizens had
the right to avoid illegal arrest and detention, Smith continues, an
improperly detained individual could be confined for months, and then “re-incarcerated
until he had paid certain fees demanded by the jailer, the clerk of the assize,
clerks of the peace, and the like.” What he describes is exactly the same
arrangement that prevails today in a probation and parole system that
encourages probation and parole officers to find excuses to “violate” their
charges as often as possible in order to recycle them through the mechanism.

Chong
was deprived of food, water, and bathroom facilities. When he was finally
released, Chong
– who had begun to suffer from hallucinations -- asked his captors to kill him.
He was hospitalized with severe dehydration and renal failure. The officials
responsible for this crime have never been punished, nor have they so much as
apologized to Chong.

Nick Christie, prior to police "help"....

The late Nick
Christie likewise had every reason to put up resistance when he was taken
into “protective” custody by Lee County, Florida sheriff’s deputies in 2009.
Christie, a resident of Cleveland, had gone to visit a brother in Florida. His
wife was concerned that the 62-year-old man, who had been diagnosed with
psychological problems, had left his medications behind. She made the familiar
and reliably fatal mistake of calling the police for “help.”

Christie, who was detained on a spurious “trespassing”
change, was shackled for nearly two full days in a restraint chair. His captors
hooded the victim and repeatedly attacked him with military-grade pepper spray.
Christie begged for the jailers to remove the “spit mask” from his face,
complaining that he couldn’t breathe. When medical personnel were finally
permitted to see Christie, they were overwhelmed by the pepper spray. When they
attempted to treat him, the corrosive chemical residue was so potent it ate
through their latex medical gloves.

This innocent man, who suffered from respiratory and heart
disease, was tortured to death. His death was ruled a homicide. The State
Attorney’s office refused to indict the officials who kidnapped and fatally
tortured Christie, insisting that there was no evidence of “criminal wrongdoing.”
(That prosecutor, Assistant State Attorney Dean R. Plattner, had
a long history of indifference regarding criminal violence by police
officers.)

...and Christie after police "helped" him.

Writing more than four decades ago, as efforts to repudiate
the right to resist arrest were gaining momentum, Arthur Smith insisted: “Because
of the evolution in criminal procedures, jail conditions, and the increased danger
from resistance, an individual is less likely to be provoked at what he
considers an unlawful arrest in 1967 than he would have been in 1767.”

By 2013, it should be obvious to all honest and observant
people that the only material difference between the medieval system Smith described
and the one that confronts us now is the fact that British subjects had a
legally recognized right to resist unlawful arrest.

Friday, March 15, 2013

(A shorter version of this essay was originally published at LewRockwell.com)“There are, in
increasingly frightening numbers, cells of angry men in the United States
preparing for combat," warns an
unusually strident house editorial by the Los Angeles Times.
"They are usually heavily armed, blinded by an intractable hatred, often
motivated by religious zeal.”

The Times editorial collective
focused its indignation upon a much safer target -- namely, “white,
right-wing Americans, all with an obsessive attachment to guns, who may
represent a greater danger to the lives of American civilians than
international terrorists.”

This steroid-enhanced militant doesn't bother the SPLC.

The statist screed makes passing reference to what
it calls “the massacre of a bizarre sect by federal agents in Waco, Texas,”
twenty years ago – without passing moral judgment on the “massacre” in
question.

Slaughtering religious eccentrics is a venial offense compared to the
grave heresy committed by those who speak ill of the Holy State, since their
"blather" -- not
the murderous actions of those who impudently presume to rule us, mind you --
"tends to get under the skin of the Timothy McVeighs of the world."
Once again: Immolating harmless people in a church is a perfectly proper thing,
assuming that this act of mass murder is carried out by the consecrated hands
of the State's enforcement caste, but referring
to it as mass murder is the sort of thing only an incipient terrorist would do.

Citing the most
recent missive from the self-appointed Stasi at the Southern Poverty Law
Center, the Times claims that there are 1,360 proto-terrorist groups --
sneeringly denounced as "patriots," "constitutionalists,"
and "sovereign citizens" -- scattered throughout the Soyuz. "These groups
should be closely monitored, with resources adequate to the task, even if it
means shifting some homeland security money from the hunt for foreign
terrorists," concludes the paper.

“On October 25, 1994, six months
before the Oklahoma City bombing, we wrote Attorney General Janet Reno about
the growing threat of domestic terrorism,” wrote SPLC President Richard Cohen to Attorney General Eric Holder and Homeland Security Secretary
Janet Napolitano. “Today, we write to express similar concerns. In the last
four years, we have seen a tremendous increase in the number of
conspiracy-minded, antigovernment groups as well as in the number of domestic
terrorist plots. As in the period before the Oklahoma City bombing, we now also
are seeing ominous threats from those who believe that the government is poised
to take their guns.”

Where the depiction of "threats" is concerned, the SPLC is notorious for rendering models of T-Rex-scale monsters from small and undistinguished bone fragments -- witness the fact that one of the "militant" groups listed in its most recent index of domestic enemies is an anti-war knitting circle led by an ailing senior citizen.

“The
idea of fighting the federal government with an AR-15 … I know that is an idea
a lot of people have – if they ever look, as I have, at what the federal
defense budget is, I think they would disabuse themselves of that notion right
away.”

Allusively, but unmistakably, Rep. Slaughter was referring to the prospect of making war against the people of the united States -- which, as it happens, meets the specific constitutional definition of "treason." Only those who have lost interest in living, or who have acquired an interest in auto-erotic asphyxiation, would hold their breath awaiting SPLC's condemnation of the vulgar threat that emerged from the tax-devouring gullet of the appropriately named Rep. Slaughter.

Echoing the central theme of Cohen's letter to the Feds, SPLC
spokesman Mark Potok, “We are in a scary moment. It is very much reminiscent,
at least to me, of the months leading up to the Oklahoma City Bombing.” This is indeed quite ominous -- not because the SPLC has correctly gauged the public mood, mind you, but because the group was deeply involved in the Fed's PATCON false flag operation that precipitated the OKC bombing. The FBI spent the last decade running COINTELPRO-style provocation operations against American Muslims. There's every reason to suspect that they're busy seeding informants and provocateurs in every cohesive group of right-wing dissidents they can find.

The SPLC-derived Los Angeles Times editorial -- which could be
digested into the phrase, "The conspiracy theorists are plotting against
us!" -- brings to mind an incident in the early 1980s in which East German
officials arrested a group of human rights activists for "defaming"
the state by claiming that it suppressed freedom of speech. As Tony Cooper, an
instructor in terrorism negotiation at the University of Texas-Dallas, pointed
out in 1995, the Regime in Washington is perfectly capable of such totalitarian
behavior.

"I see the
formation of a curious crusading mentality among certain law enforcement
agencies to stamp out what they see as a threat to government generally,"
Cooper told the Washington Post
in 1995. "It's an exaggerated concern that they are facing a
nationwide conspiracy and that somehow this will get out of control unless it
is stamped out at a very early stage."

Never forget: A
"conspiracy theorist" is someone who notices things without official
permission -- and a "terrorist" is anybody who challenges the
government's monopoly on violence.

A quick note...

I want to thank everyone who has donated to Pro Libertate since my last post. Your help is still very much needed -- and even more appreciated. Once again, thank you so much!

Look for another story in this space later today (March 15) or perhaps early tomorrow.